It was a journey home Zhang Xiaole feared he would not be able
to afford to make.
The migrant worker was among dozens of people that had turned up
to work just a few days earlier only to find the factory had been
closed down and their boss had fled.
But as he embarked on the train recently, along with another 100
delighted workmates, for Spring Festival he was safe in the
knowledge he had been fully paid for all his work at the firm.
He was among workers at the factory who phoned the government's
hotline for wage defaults. Just two days later their money two
months worth of wages had been paid.
The city in southwest China's Sichuan Province where about 70
percent of its 10 million population are migrant workers has
carried out a city-wide crackdown on wage defaulting since
October.
The efforts have paid off. By Tuesday, the Shenzhen Bureau of
Labor and Social Security had punished more than 1,300 offending
companies and imposed 47 million yuan (US$5.8 million) of fines on
them. Meanwhile, some 70 million yuan (US$8.6 million) of wages had
been claimed back.
"Shenzhen doesn't welcome companies which ignore the law," Tan
Guoxiang, chief of the Shenzhen Discipline Inspection Commission,
said in a meeting recently.
"The government is determined to fight against wage defaulting.
Any offender will be found and punished."
Starting from October 9, the 500-member law enforcement team
checked hundreds of companies, especially the labor-intensive
enterprises, to check workers were being paid on time.
The labor departments also followed up reports from the special
hotline.
Earlier this month, eight company executives were jailed for up
to one month for wage defaulting, the first time on the Chinese
mainland that defaulters have been subject to criminal
prosecutions.
Since the new hard line has been adopted, three companies in
Shenzhen took into consideration workers' unpaid wages when they
were counting their annual losses and gains.
In central Shenzhen's Futian District, a company allocated more
than 1 million yuan (US$123,304) owed to employees; an electronics
company in Nanshan District paid back 280,000 yuan (US$34,525) to
its 130 employees and the boss of a Taiwan-funded company in Bao'an
District took out a 10 million yuan (US$1.2 million) loan from the
bank to pay the 3,000-plus workers, said Guan Lingen, director of
the local labor bureau.
(China Daily January 27, 2006)